Cutting down junipers

The discussion about the benefits of reducing the number of Ashe juniper trees in the Hill Country is anything but simple. Just look at the comments on this story to see the diversity of the politics, misinformation and opinions.

The biology and hydrology are complicated enough, and it does not help simplify things when the interests of military bases, developers, ranchers, and long-held land stewardship practices are all in conflict with each other.

Here is breakdown of the challenge:

Selective clearing of junipers, aka mountain cedars even though they are not cedars, is recognized by most scientists and range managers as a “best management practice.” In broad strokes the removal of junipers helps restore the land to resemble what it was before heavy grazing and development were introduced. Native plants and animals benefit because they are better adapted to the original landscape. It also appears that it helps keep more water flowing into the streams and ground and can reduce flooding. For ranchers it provides more grass for livestock to eat.

But clearing of the land is not just bulldozing, cutting or burning all the junipers. They are native to the Hill Country and other native species depend on having some around, namely the federally protected golden-cheeked warblers and black-capped vireos. The trees’ deep roots stabilize steep slopes, where incidentally the oldest stands are found and provide the best endangered species habitat.

The real challenge is not the clearing of junipers, but the maintenance of the land afterward. Ranchers have been cutting down junipers for more than a century but without fire or clearing crews sweeping through every five to 10 years, the trees come back.

There has never been a lot of money to be made from running cattle in the Hill Country and now there is even less, so ranchers can’t afford to clear the land and often end up overgrazing it. Compounding the effect is that they can make more money with less work by selling off parcels with views.

The new landowners usually have little interest in livestock and often see trees as a symbol of environmental health and let the junipers take over grassland.

The loss of habitat forces federal and state governments to become involved because the change threatens some species with extinction. The loss also poses a threat to our drinking water as more rainwater evaporates and less is filtered as it seeps into streams and aquifers.

The idea is the endangered species are markers of the total health of the ecosystem. If they are protected, the ecosystem is protected and so are the clean water and air we all like to drink and breathe.

Those benefits, however, do not provide any direct financial gain for Hill County landowners and so the economics continues to favor the loss of grassland and endangered species habitat.

As more habitat is lost additional pressure and oversight are put on what remains.

In Bexar County the Army’s Camp Bullis has some of the largest tracts of documented golden-cheeked warbler and black-capped vireo habitat. Those tracts limit what the Army can do, which makes San Antonio less attractive to the Army, which threatens the local economy.

This is why so many people care about two little birds, a scratchy tree and what remaining large landowners do with their land.

In the photo, Phillip Wright, a range managment specialist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, checks on the grass of a recently cleared plot of land north of San Antonio.